These teachings relate generally to the field of remote camera video viewing and control, more particularly to enable multiple users the ability to remotely access and control, via the Internet and/or Intranet, a video camera without each users command conflicting or trumping other users.
One of the major problems associated with a users ability to remotely view a live camera stream is that the viewing of such stream is, for all practical purposes, limited to one user. This poses a significant problem when a camera is tasked for multiple purposes such as crowd control, inventory monitoring, traffic monitoring and security purposes—applications that will be referred to as “monitoring applications”. In the aforementioned scenarios, there might be multiple users each tasked with a different purpose for using and viewing the video stream from the IP Video Camera. Unfortunately, when more than one user attempts to view the same video stream from a single IP Video Camera, a universal method does not exist to ensure that all users are viewing the image they desire, let alone the ability to perform complex analytics on the image. In most instances, the commands from one user will trump commands from another user, which will severely limit or even eliminate the other user's ability to perform their task. In another scenario, the IP Video Camera will backlog the various commands submitted by each user and run though them in the order they are received, which will give the appearance of erratic camera behavior to all of the users. The end result is that most users will not be able to view their desired portion of the image and, as such, their ability to accomplish their task is greatly diminished. Although some Internet Protocol (“IP”) cameras distribute multiple video streams, which could allow each viewer to control and manipulate his/her own stream, this is not a viable solution to the problem. At best it is a severely limited solution to having multiple users simultaneously access a single camera as the streams will burden the network and greatly increases lag time between the users command and the IP Video Camera's response, which could mean the viewers would miss some live information due to lag. Even assuming the network had the capacity to distribute various streams from a single IP Video Camera, it is unlikely that the IP Video Camera will have the processing power to allow each user to efficiently manipulate and perform analytics on his or her stream let alone the ability to allow each user to perform his or her own analytics such as tracking different object, various alarm triggering events, and color correction. Moreover, many IP Video Cameras that provide the capability to move around the image and focus on specific areas requiring the mechanical movement of the lens. Unless the lens is moved, which might contradict the desires of another user, it might not be possible or desirable to have a mechanical camera with a single mechanical lens view two different objects outside of its view.
There is therefore a need to provide a system that allows for multiple users to remotely access, control and view a single camera providing a single stream where each user's command and access will be as if they are in full control of the camera and are not conflicting with other user commands or overburdening the network.
There is therefore a need to provide a system and method that allow remote monitoring by multiple users where each user's command and access will be as if they are in full control of the camera and are not conflicting with other user commands or overburdening the network.